Under Vesuvius(65)

“Yes, Praetor,” they said.

“Very well. Let’s see what is to be seen.”

Silva conducted us to the room, which opened off a central courtyard. Nervous slaves stood by with lamps. “Hermes,” I said, “take the lamps inside and place them yourself. You know how to do it.” By this I meant that he had long practice at not disturbing a crime scene.

“Yes, Praetor.” He took the first lamp and walked in very carefully. Then he returned for another, taking them in one at a time until he had placed eight or ten within. When the room was illuminated, I walked in.

Immediately I was conscious of the smell that Manius Silva had noted—the sordid smell of death. Quadrilla lay on the bed amid luxuriant, disordered pillows. She was quite naked and had that deflated look common to the newly dead, like a wineskin that has been drained. She was a handsome woman of advancing years and clearly had once been a great beauty. Her overstretched navel gaped obscenely, the sapphire gone from its setting. I looked around the room and did not see it anywhere.

“Manius,” I said, “where did Quadrilla keep her—her abdominal sapphire?”

He pointed to an ivory box upon a table. “She had a number of them.”

“Hermes,” I said. He opened the box to reveal around twenty sapphires. Some were rimmed with gold, some carved intaglio, even one with a pearl set in its center. They were nestled in yellow silk, each in its own depression. One depression was empty. “Which one is missing?”

“The largest,” Silva said. “It was her favorite.”

“Was she wearing it earlier today?”

“She was.”

“It may be in the bedding,” I said. “We’ll have it searched once her body is attended to.”

There was no mystery about how she had died. She lay in an untidy sprawl, her head twisted to one side. The hilt of a miniature dagger protruded from the base of her skull, at what my physician friend Asklepi-odes would term the insertion point of the neck vertebrae.

“Manius, do you recognize this weapon?” I asked. “Is it from this house?”

“Never saw it before,” he said. From without, I heard whispering to the effect that Quadrilla had been killed in the same fashion as Gaeto. Hermes shushed them.

Beneath the smell of death I detected another fragrance, one with which I had grown familiar of late. “Manius, I suppose you can identify this perfume?”

He stepped closed and sniffed with a sick look on his face. “Of course. It is Zoroaster’s Rapture. It was her favorite, and incredibly costly. Even I was able to procure only small amounts of it. She wore it for special occasions.”

“And was she wearing it when she left you earlier?”

“She was not,” he said grimly, not missing the implication.

I walked carefully around the room. There was no disorder save on the bed, where the cushions and coverlets were in some disarray, possibly as a result of the death struggle, but I doubted that.

I examined the lamps that had been in the room before we entered. Each had a good supply of oil. Either they had been snuffed out, or they had not been lit that night.

“There is no more to be done here,” I said. “Call in the libitinarii. I want to know if that sapphire is found. Now I will talk with the majordomo.”

Hermes had put the man in a small room opening off the triclinium. As his name would indicate, he was Egyptian. Hapi is the twin god of the Nile. He was middle-aged, bald, and pudgy, possibly a eunuch. When I walked in, he was sweating profusely.

“Praetor!” he piped. Yes, definitely a eunuch. “Praetor, I had no idea— I don’t know what—”

“Just tell me what you do know,” I commanded. “To begin with, when did your mistress return from the festival?”

“Just after sunset, Praetor.” He wrung his hands, eyes darting in all directions save toward me.

“Was she alone?”

“Well—well, she arrived in a litter. A closed litter.”

“Then I will want to speak to the litter bearers.”

“It was not my lady’s litter, Praetor. Her own litter had returned perhaps an hour earlier. She had dismissed her bearers, telling them that she wished to stroll in Diana’s Grove, and that she would walk home, since it was such a fine evening.”

“I see. And did you recognize this litter or its bearers?”

He looked down at the floor as if his salvation lay there. “No, Praetor. It was costly, and the bearers were all black Nubians.”

“And she did not explain how she came to return in this fashion? Were you not curious?”

“One—one learns not to ask, Praetor.”